In English. No prerequisites.
cross-listed with Comparative Literature 01:195:311:01
The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) explored the human mind and soul through some of the most vivid and tenacious characters in world literature: murderers, madmen, children, terrorists, atheists, and prostitutes; brothers and sisters; gamblers and saints. This course traces Dostoevsky’s career as a literary celebrity, political prisoner, traveler, journalist, religious and nationalist thinker, and especially, as a novelist who pushed the genre to its outermost formal and philosophical bounds. Our readings will represent this thematic and stylistic variety, from Dostoevsky’s early epistolary novella Poor People (1864) and his fictionalized memoir Notes from a Dead House (1862) to his sprawling novels Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Demons (1872). No prerequisites; all readings and discussions in English.
Fulfills SAS Core goals AHo, AHp.
